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..when Sunni suicide bombers murdered 118 Shia pilgrims (and wounded almost 200 more) on Tuesday, Sunnis around the globe looked away: Shias only count as Muslims when America can be blamed for their suffering.[...]

The Sunni Arab campaign against Shias isn't just a struggle for political advantage: It reflects an impulse to genocide. And it makes a grim joke of claims of Muslim unity.

He notes that the suicide bombers that murdered the Shia pilgrims were Saudi. The Saudis, despite the thinly veiled bribes they offer in the form of future lucrative consulting gigs and lavish endowments etc for the Washington DC nomenklatura and many of its institutions (if you haven't read Bob Baer's Sleeping with the Devilyet, there's never a better time than the present, and note especially the parts expunged by our erstwhile intelligence establishment no doubt to avoid embarrassing our so called "Saudi friends") are still promoting radical Sunni Islam and inciting hatred towards everyone else - Christians, Jews, Anamists, Shia, Buddhists, gays, etc - at every turn.

To the Saudi royal family, dead Shias aren't tragedies - they're trophies. One almost expects those bloated, bigoted princes to organize Shia-hunting safaris the way they slaughter endangered species when vacationing in impoverished African countries (been there, seen that).

Bloated, bigoted and lavishly fueling their corruption and hatred mongering with proceeds from the biggest pot of oil on the planet. The al Saud family sits on one quarter (you read that right, 25%, one family) of the world's oil reserves. And boy are they putting their oil money to effective use.

the Saudis are waging a propaganda campaign to convince American opinion-makers that they're our best pals in the whole, wide world.

It works. An honorable elder statesman I respect recently got suckered during a junket to Saudi Arabia. He left Riyadh convinced he'd been sitting down with our indispensible allies.

Well, the view I've seen with my own eyes - in dozens of Muslim and mixed-faith countries - is of Saudi money spent lavishly to divide struggling societies, to block social and educational progress for Muslims and to preach deadly hatred toward the West.

Until 9/11, the Saudis got away with their extremist filth in this country, too. And Saudi-funded mosques here still seek to prevent Muslims from integrating into American society.

The Saudis, not the Iranians, are the worst anti-American hate-mongers in the world today. When our dignitaries visit Prince Bandar and his buddies, they get the (literal) royal treatment. But in the slums of Mombasa or Cairo, in Lahore, Delhi and Istanbul, the Saudis do everything in their power to make Muslims hate us.

[...]Our relationship with the Saudis reminds me of the scene in the film "The Shining" when Jack Nicholson's character imagines he's embracing a beautiful woman only to open his eyes and find himself smooching a decomposing corpse. It's time for Washington's Saudi-lovers to open their eyes.

An al-Qa'ida-affiliated group said it killed 18 kidnapped Iraqi government security forces yesterday in retaliation for the alleged rape of a Sunni woman by members of the Shia-dominated police, posting an online video of the officers being shot in the back of their heads while kneeling in a field.

The authenticity of the three-minute video, posted on a website previously used by the Islamic State of Iraq, could not be immediately verified.

The group also said it had killed 14 policemen, whose bodies were found at the weekend in the northeast province of Diyala, in retaliation for the alleged rape. Some of the victims were decapitated.

[...]

The execution video released at the weekend first depicts the 18 men, some in Iraqi military uniforms, blindfolded, hands tied behind their backs and lined up in three rows before a screen. The men in the front row are kneeling. Masked men point machine guns at the captives.

Two militants, with checked scarves on their heads, then fire handguns at close range into the backs of the men's heads, while a third militant carries a black banner ahead of them. As they are shot, the victims fall, head forward to the ground. The shooting is accompanied by chants of "Allahu Akbar" (God is the greatest). "At your service, sister" is chanted repeatedly in a likely reference to the revenge for the allegedly raped Sunni woman.

Another male voice is heard saying the Islamic State of Iraq had ordered the 18 security troops executed because Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's Government had failed to meet the group's demands to hand over the officers who allegedly raped the woman in Baghdad last month, and to release all Sunni women detainees from Iraqi prisons.

A 20-year-old woman had told Arab television stations that she was detained in a Sunni area of west Baghdad on February 18, taken to a police garrison and assaulted by three officers. The woman gave a name which identified her as Sunni.

Mr Maliki, a Shia, announced an investigation but cleared the officers the following day, stirring outrage among Sunni politicians. Mr Maliki said the rape claim was fabricated to tarnish the reputation of the police and the security crackdown in Baghdad.

Around 100 soldiers and rebels have been killed in fighting this week innorthern Yemen. This is the latest round of fighting between the centralgovernment and the Al-Houthi-led Believing Youth movement. The rebels aretrying to establish an imamate (cleric-led) country and want to see theoverthrow of the existing government. Some 60 soldiers have been killed in thepast month and more than 700 since the Believing Youth was founded in 2004. The Al-Houthis are Shi’ites, while the central government in ‘Sana is Sunnidominated.

Car bomb blew up near a bus killing 18 members of Iran's Revolutionary Guards (Shia, of course). The Sunni group Jund'Allah (soldiers of Allah), led by Abdul-Malik Rigi, a Balochi separatist group which has carried out previous attacks against the Mullahs regime, has claimed responsibility. Gateway Pundit has the details on this attack. Click here for more info on Jund'Allah and on the Iranian Balochistan, a majority Sunni region in Shia Iran.

UPDATE: Amir Taheri has more on the attack and Su-Shi tension in Iran. Excerpt:

The incident confirms [the mullahs] fears that they now have enemies that can use precisely their own tactics against them. Car bombs, fake uniforms and suicide attacks were introduced to the Middle East by Khomeinists first in Iran under the Shah and later in Lebanon, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and as far away as Argentina by branches of Hezbollah. In the past three years, groups allied to Tehran have used the tactics against the new regimes in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The Khomeinist regime is having a taste of its own medicine, and is clearly panic-stricken by the experience. [...]

Iran's Baluch community, more than 2 million souls, is part of a 20 million-strong nation spread across Pakistan, Afghanistan, Oman and the Persian Gulf states. As Sunni Muslims, the Baluchi feel shut out of Iranian life that, since 1979, has been dominated by Shiite clerics. Under the Khomeinist constitution, no Sunni can run for president, let alone the office of "Supreme Guide." There are no Sunni Cabinet ministers, provincial governors, ambassadors, high court judges or directors of public corporations. Sunnis are not allowed to have their own schools and mosques outside areas where they form a majority.

Sunnis account for almost 12 percent of Iran's population of 70 million. The largest number is ethnic Kurds, about 4 million, followed by the Baluch, some 2 million, and the Turkoman, who number 1.8 million in the northeast. Sunnis also are in a majority in Talesh, on the Caspian Sea, and in parts of the coastline on the Persian Gulf. The capital, Tehran, is home to some 2 million Sunnis, who are, nevertheless, denied the right to have a mosque of their own.

The mullahs have rewritten all textbooks to reflect only the Khomeinist brand of Shiite Islamic theology, history and rituals. The registrar of birth does not allow newborn babies to be given typically Sunni names.

Under President Muhammad Khatami, a mid-ranking mullah, repression against Sunnis intensified. The only Sunni mosque in Mashad, the Iranian main " holy" city, was burned to the ground. Efforts to rebuild it have been blocked by the government since 2000. The Khatami presidency also witnessed the assassination of dozens of Sunni clerics in mysterious circumstances.

Since 1979, Iran has witnessed countless Sunni revolts, often crushed by force. But the Khomeinist regime has fomented sectarianism in Islam for more than a quarter of a century by inciting Shiite minorities against Sunni regimes in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Kuwait, among others. It is using Hezbollah to provoke a sectarian war in Lebanon. In Iraq, the Khomeinist regime is arming Shiite militias to attack the U.S.-led multinational force and undermine the new democratic regime.

The dramatic attack in Zahedan has shown that sectarianism is a game that others, too, can play.

"The Shiites were very happy that they killed Saddam, but the Sunnis were in tears.” This is not Baghdad but Dearborn, Michigan, as the NYT reports about vandalism and violence in America's Muslim hub. "Long before the vandalism in Dearborn and Detroit, feuds had been simmering on some college campuses. Some Shiite students said they had faced repeated discrimination, like being formally barred by the Sunni-dominated Muslim Student Association from leading prayers. At numerous universities, Shiite students have broken away from the association, which has dozens of chapters nationwide, to form their own groups.

It goes on in New Jersey as well: “A microcosm of what is happening in Iraq happened in New Jersey because people couldn’t put aside their differences,” said Sami Elmansoury, a Sunni Muslim and former vice president of the Islamic Society at Rutgers University, where there has been a sharp dispute. And at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore: Salmah Y. Rizvi, a junior who stocked a reading room with Islamic texts, said the Muslim Student Association there told her to remove them because too many were by Shiite authors.

The NYT also reports that Shiite prisoners in New York state jails prompted a long-running lawsuit by Shiite inmates seeking separate prayer facilities.

Lots of murder and mayhem in Pakistan, where Sunnis are taking advantage of the crowds at the rather bloody Shiite religious festival of Ashoura to blow people up in various ways:

"Two rockets hit a Shiite Muslim mosque on Monday in the northwestern Pakistan city of Bannu, wounding 11 people, two seriously [...] Anti-government Islamic militants have fired rockets at military and government installations in Bannu in the past, but the targeting of the mosque suggests a sectarian motive. In the past three days, at least two suicide bombers in northwestern Pakistan have detonated explosives near Shiite gatherings for Ashoura. No group has claimed responsibility, but Sunni Muslim extremists are suspected."

"At least thirteen people, including two senior police officials were killed and another sixty sustained injuries in suicide attack in Peshawar, capital of the Northwestern Frontier Province (NWFP), tonight.

Provincial law minister Malik Zafar Azam confirmed 13 fatalities in the attack that took place almost an hour ahead of the start of a Shiite mourning process in Dhaki Dalgaran Bazar of densely populated Qissa Khuwani area.

He said that majority of those killed and injured in the blast were police and law enforcement officials, who were deployed in the area to provide security cover to the mourning procession [...]

''Local authorities found leather jacket and body parts including legs of the suspected suicide bomber from site of the attack, which have been sent to a laboratory for DNA test,'' officials said." [...]

This is the second act of terror since yesterday. A suicide attack near parking area of Marriott hotel in Islamabad had killed both the bomber and a security guard."

Sheikh Yousuf Al-Qarahawi would like the Kurds to join in the melee on the side of the so-called opressed Sunnis of Iraq. Yeah, because the Sunni dominated dictatorship of Saddam Hussein just treated the Kurds oh so well. Sheikh Yousuf must have clean forgotten about Halabja.

"I call upon our Kurdish brothers, I call upon Jalal Al-Talabani, Mas'oud Al-Barazani, and the Islamic and national Kurdish leaders... I call upon them to fulfill their duty – first of all, through mediation. They should mediate between the two sides. They constitute aninfluential force. They hold the posts of president and foreign minister, andthey have significant power. They should mediate. "If two parties of believersfight one another, make peace between them. And if one party acts unjustlytowards the other, fight the one acting unjustly, until it complies withAllah's command." This is Allah's decree to the nation. The Kurds are nowrequired to take this stand. If their mediation is rejected, they must fightthe party that acts unjustly. In my opinion, the Sunnis will not reject thismediation, because they are the oppressed ones. They are the ones beingattacked. They are the ones being expelled from their homes. They are the oneswhose mosques are being plundered. They are the ones who are being kidnappedfrom their homes. They are the ones whose decapitated heads are rolling in thestreets. They are the ones who are severely tortured before being killed. Theyare the ones who suffer these tragedies. If the Shiite brothers reject [themediation], the Kurds are required to support the oppressed."

Sheikh Yousuf also conveniently appears to have forgotten who started the bloodbath in Iraq. A brief glimpse at news archives might serve to remind him that the Shi'a swallowed quite a bit of Sunni murder and mayhem before finally having enough and hitting back. MEMRI link also contains video.

This statement by an Iraqi former Republican Guard commando named Rami tells you everything you need to know about the current situation in Iraq:

"I used to attack the Americans when that was the jihad. Now there is no jihad. Go around and see in Adhamiya [the notorious Sunni insurgent area] - all the commanders are sitting sipping coffee; it's only the young kids that are fighting now, and they are not fighting Americans any more, they are just killing Shia. There are kids carrying two guns each and they roam the streets looking for their prey. They will kill for anything, for a gun, for a car and all can be dressed up as jihad."

Another one by a Sunni called Abu Omar: "Its not a good time to be a Sunni in Baghdad." He had been on the Americans' wanted list for three years but I had never seen him so anxious; he had trimmed his beard in the close-cropped Shia style and kept looking towards the door. His brother had been kidnapped a few days before, he told me, and he believed he was next on a Shia militia's list. He had fled his home in the north of the city and was staying with relatives in a Sunni stronghold in west Baghdad.

He said: "I am trying to talk to the Americans. I want to give them assurances that no one will attack them in our area if they stop the Shia militias from coming." [...] The Americans are trying to talk to us Sunnis and we need to show them that we can do politics. We need to use the Americans to fight the Shia."

An Iraqi Sunni, Abu Aisha, explains the Su-Shi business: "Every time they [Sunnis] arrest a Shia, we take their car, we sell it and use the money to fund the fighters, and jihad," The mosque sheik or the local commander collects the money and it is distributed among the fighters; some get fixed salaries, others are paid by "operations", and the money left is used for ammunition.

"It has become a business, they give you money to kill Shia, we take their houses and sell their cars," said Rami. "The Shia are doing the same. Last week on the main highway in our area, they killed a Shia army officer. He had a brand new Toyota sedan. The idiots burned the car. I offered them $40,000 for it, they said no. Imagine how many jihads they could have done with 40k."

To those who still believe that there is a snowball's chance in hell that Su-Shi Mania will come to an expeditious resolution, you may want to watch this, ahem, altercation on al Jazeera. The beaten wife mentality of much of the Arab world is quite eloquently on display as well, with the following statement: "Saddam executed my own brother and many of my relatives. He executed the uncle of my children but the way he was executed proved Saddam was a brave man. He has truly become our martyr, and we will visit his grave like the graves of the righteous."

UPDATE: We neglected to mention, the first clip features what must truly be one of the worst insults ever: "You Persian shoe" (you might miss it in the rapid Arabic, so here is the transcript.) But do watch the video, you won't regret it.

September 2007

Middle East Map

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Praise for Vital Perspective

"If there were just a hint more thinking like this in Washington, prosecuting and decisively winning the War on Terror would not be the 'controversy' some choose to make it…at the cost of National Security"